Find the King

Generating awareness through play

Find The King was a concept we designed to increase awareness of how disorientation affects dementia sufferers.

Revealing narrative slowly, players learn of the wizards own dementia through play, a unique approach to the subject that aligns with the reality of suffering from dementia.

The Find the King prototype was designed in partnership with neuroscientist Dr. Michael Hornberger (UEA) and the support of the Wellcome Trust.

The concept

Find the King centres around an ageing wizard on a journey to find a king who disappeared when one of his routine spells went wrong.

Its the players task to help the wizard retrace his steps to retrieve pages of his journal. In doing so so he can fix the spell and find the king.

Moving through the castle you discover handwritten notes left by a mysterious yet helpful patron. As the game draws to an end the reasons for everything, including the wizard’s peculiar behaviour, start to become clear.

Creating an immersive experience

The main objective of Find The King was to find a way to generate awareness of one of the world’s most commonly faced medical conditions: dementia.

To immerse the player into the world of a dementia sufferer, we integrated features into the game such as disappearing entrances, mysterious objects being found and deliberately triggered confusion through level design.